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July 09, 2014

Values, Murders, and Condemnations

Just at the end of the shiva period for her son, Naftali, Rachel Fraenkel offered condolences to the parents of Muhammed
Abu Khdeir’s parents and condemned the killing. Every government
official from the Prime Minister to local mayors, from politicians on the far right
to those on the far left, along with Israel’s chief rabbis and the Israeli news
sources have condemned the teen’s murder.

Adding my name to a long list of Jewish and Israeli bloggers’
condemnations felt at least like something tangible to do with the disbelief
and shame that the killing evoked
across the Jewish world and throughout Israel.

Objections
have been leveled against those who point out that in Palestinian towns, people
react with celebration, rather than with shame, to the murders of Neftali,
Eyal, and Gilad; that unlike Israel’s government, the Hamas government
praises kidnappings, advocates for
continued such “operations,” and in this case increased their rocket firing at
Israeli cities once the three boys were kidnapped. The killers of the Jewish
boys are hailed as heroes, while the perpetrators of the murder of the Arab
Israeli boy have shamed their whole country and will be shunned as well as
jailed.

These
differences represent contrasting values but not so for some, like Anshel Pfeffer who
writes in Haaretz “We are all to blame...” for Muhammed’s death. And yet,
certainly all Palestinians are not to blame for the terrible murders of Gilad,
Eyal, and Naftali.

Isn’t
acknowledging Israel’s basic humane values especially important when those
values are betrayed?